Manchester University spin-out C4X Discovery today raised £11m as it made its London Stock Exchange debut.

The drug development firm, based on Ducie Street, Manchester, placed 11 million shares with institutional and other investors, at a price of 100p per share.

That gave it a market capitalisation of around £31m.

In a statement, the company said: “C4XD has, we believe, the only technology in the world that can generate accurate, experimentally-derived dynamic solution 3D structures of drug molecules in just a matter of days. It can be used in conjunction with existing technologies for structure-based drug design and can make a particularly high impact when protein crystallography is not routinely available, as is the case for GPCRs and ion channels.

“The technology can also be applied to help identify and generate novel crystal polymorph forms, with exciting potential applications in the life cycle management of existing branded pharmaceuticals.”

C4X’s broker and adviser is Zeus Capital, in Manchester. Ross Andrews, head of Plc advisory, said: “C4X Discovery is well positioned for the public markets. The Company’s innovative business model offers the development of small molecule drugs more safely and quickly than currently available to the pharmaceuticals industry and at significantly reduced cost.

“This is the second float we have completed in the past week, amid very volatile market conditions.”